Cyril Orji - A Semiotic Christology

I n one of his prison letters (April , 1944 ), Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote that what bothers him incessantly is the question what Christianity really is, or indeed who Christ really is, for us today. Nineteenth century Roman Catholic theology, for example, attempted to meet a need, which was to respond to the challenges posed by modernity and the Enlightenment critiques of religion. It did this effectively under the cultural matrix of scholasticism. The ideas of St. Thomas Aquinas, particularly the philosophical system initiated by Joseph Marechal, known as Transcendental Thomism (a blend of Thomism and Kantian metaphysics), became the groartige Idee that helped Catholicism overcome these challenges. But what was at one time a solution can at another time become a problem (in the Thomas Kuhn sense).

Contemporary Christological discourse has for a while been stymied by the failure to move beyond Transcendental Thomism. In spite of its achievements, Transcendental Thomism is a product of the faculty psychology of the Aristotelian universe. Faculty psychology has obvious counter-positions. Faculty psychology is static and not attuned to new developments in science and semiotics. It does not heed the trend towards an evolutionary universe. Bernard Lonergan framed it best when he observed, using the example of a substance that has been pivotal in the development of civilizations and cultures throughout human history, firethat fire was conceived by Aristotle as an element, fire was conceived by Antoine Laurent Lavoisiers predecessors as a manifestation of phlogiston, and fire was conceived by later chemists as a type of oxidization. Although all these thinkers who lived across centuries had different conceptions of fire, it would be incorrect to say that Aristotle had an incorrect explanation of what fire is. That said, we must also admit that conceptions differ, depending on the scientific temper of each age. There is a difference between a descriptive and explanatory conception of a reality.

What I have been alluding to, precisely, is what this book is about that Christology is like a symphony. This symphony requires both description and explanatory hypotheses. Transcendental Thomism was a description. This book is, therefore, an attempt at an explanatory account of basic issues in Christology, employing a semiotic analysis. A semiotic model is consistent with the evolutionary worldview of contemporary science. This, by no means, disparages theologies constructed out of the old framework. It is rather a recognition that what the times demand is a new direction and that the nineteenth century solution (transcendental Thomism) is in need of a transposition, if we are to ensure that the science of Christology has a future.

The book has seven chapters. The chapters are organized thematically. Chapter explores some basic methodological issues in the study of Christology. The chapter addresses the transcendental Thomism conundrum. It argues that contemporary Christology needs to anchor its study, not on a metaphysics that lends itself to faculty psychology, but on a metaphysics of presence. If theology is to be a science, it needs a method that can accommodate all the revolutions in physics that have occurred from the sixteenth century onwards. These revolutions present us with conceptions of physical nature radically different from that entertained by classical physics. The complexity of the data and genres to be studied in Christology have made it imperative that contemporary Christology be attentive to the Saussurean distinction between diachronic and synchronic exegesis. The chapter contends that Christology should be as synchronic as it is diachronic and that a blend of the two axes is helpful for our understanding of who Jesus really is for us today. The chapter highlights faith as a sine qua non condition for understanding who Jesus is. Although non-believers can engage in Christology, their discourse is only a hypothetical discourse that is based on a contrary-to-fact condition. Since faith is what distinguishes theology from other disciplines, like sociology, psychology, and biology, the chapter contends that non-Christians who do not confess Jesus as Lord cannot meaningfully engage in Christology the way Christians do. This is because the intelligibility to be grasped in the science of Christ is not prescriptive, but derives rather from the invariant structure of consciousness of people with a legitimate (physical or spiritual) experience of the risen Christ.